Selling a financial product requires more and more knowledge. Customers are getting better informed, requirements within law and regulations are getting tighter. But how to reach your valued clients with those essential facts and figures? Not by squeezing them into bulky manuals. What is needed is a logical system, and only offering the information that is really needed. That’s why ABN AMRO is developing clever ‘knowledge banks’. The aim: better advice for the customer, based on exactly the right knowledge.
ABN AMRO:
the benefits of a knowledge-based approach
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By Henk Jonkers
At ABN AMRO, the business approach has a clear focus: how can we improve our customers’ situation? “One way of achieving a consistent level of quality is a more intensive use of standardisation. And making knowledge, which might be locked up within the organisation, more readily available”, says Roland Maas, senior business manager at ABN AMRO and responsible for the Design & Improvement department. “But unfortunately many knowledge-intensive processes cannot be standardised easily. Mortgage advice and the administration when somebody passes away are good examples of this. These are personal matters which require a specific understanding. That knowledge can be found partially within our advisers’ heads, but it is also stored inside impressive almanacs, work instructions, intranet applications and the like. Digital sources can be opened up by using their search option, but that is not enough. Just think of Google. Try to find exactly what you are looking for within those 2,000 results! Sources may provide us with all the knowledge we need, in every possible detail, but at the same time they are poorly accessible and not very customer-friendly.”
In addition to this it takes more and more knowledge these days to be a good mortgage adviser. “Just think of the requirements for our products as issued by the Autoriteit Financiële Markten (the Dutch government’s financial watchdog, ed.) and the Financial Surveillance Law”, says Maas. “We must be able to explain openly and precisely how we came up with a certain piece of advice, or recommended a particular product. ABN AMRO’s front office staff have to be aware of these tight requirements and must be able to apply them.”
Working the knowledge-based way
ABN AMRO started investigating a knowledge-based work approach approximately two years ago. How does it fit in with the bank’s normal way of operating? “Knowledge is not a synonym for information”, explains Maas. “We use knowledge technology. We can improve the quality of our service by making valuable knowledge available exactly where it is needed at the time. This works out as follows. Using a knowledge application has two components. On the one hand we use it to design our knowledge-intensive processes, i.e. gathering the required data. We store these data inside knowledge banks, using Match™ Developer technology. This application guarantees a transparent, focused and simple storage of knowledge. On the other hand the application is able to present the knowledge to the customer. In fact this happens within the knowledge bank, without the use of a single software engineer. The lifespan of a knowledge bank is very short. To us that is a big plus. We are able to build a new bank in six to eight weeks. In the old days that could easily take half a year.”
It is not only mortgages for which ABN AMRO uses Knowledge Values’ Match™ technology. The bank is planning several more knowledge banks, which would enable the knowledge-based work approach elsewhere within the organisation as well. “The knowledge application uses logical steps”, says Maas. “Based on the customer’s information it presents exactly the right information. The instrument also shakes every single branch of the decision tree. Nothing will escape the adviser’s attention.”
Investigating all options, step by step
Following many meetings, workshops and tests ABN AMRO started using a prototype of the knowledge application last June. The bank’s mortgage advisers now use this when they meet their clients. In a pilot programme in the The Hague area the advisers now work with the application and are testing its usability. In fact the software ‘guides’ the adviser through the conversation with the customer, exploring all options which may apply to the customer’s personal situation. Is this person aged over 35, with a pension age of 65? What will his post-retirement income be? How big is the risk that he can no longer afford to pay off his mortgage? A step by step exploration of all the relevant options regarding the sale of a mortgage.
Ron van der Ploeg, mortgage adviser in the The Hague area, has been using the Knowledge Values’ application since June. “Initially I found it all rather complicated”, he says. “A new application means lot of changes. Many of my colleagues were quite sceptical. You come across all sorts of things. No home insurance? Clicking the ‘i’ symbol on the screen provides you with an overview of all the risks involved. You get a much more comprehensive picture of the customer.” Which is crucial, according to Van der Ploeg, as consumers are becoming more and more demanding. “Often people already know a lot about our products, after gathering information on the internet. Such advance knowledge increases their expectations, when they meet a mortgage adviser. You have to prove your added value.”
Not a ‘question and answer’ game
So what do customers think of the new approach? “When we first meet, we tell our customers that we are using a new system, which will more or less guide us through the conversation. Usually nobody objects to that. For the customer it means that we won’t ignore anything relevant.”
When a computer tells you what to ask, a certain skill is required to keep the conversation lively. In the words of Van der Ploeg: “Of course it should still be a real conversation, not a ‘question and answer’ game. We provide the customer with an overview of all things discussed and anything upon which we have agreed. This is another improvement, compared with how we used to work in the past, when it was mainly figures we sent our customers back home with. Now we come up with a summary of the conversation, including all the options we have discussed.”
Precisely the right knowledge
As already indicated, building a new knowledge bank using Match™ takes approximately six to eight weeks. What does this involve? “It’s all a bit of a journey”, says Willem Wulffraat, management consultant for knowledge-based work at ABN AMRO. “We take small steps, with lots of feedback. Quite often we organise workshops. We invite relevant specialists and people who deal with everyday matters to participate. We bring together professionals such as tax experts, marketing managers, lawyers and product managers, and front line workers such as mortgage advisers and our administrative staff. Together they attempt to gather all the relevant knowledge needed in order to offer mortgage advice. Existing manuals and work instructions play a role, of course. But by filtering and linking information we make sure that our advisers and customers have access to precisely the right knowledge.”
Henk Jonkers is a freelance journalist